Nine Business Ideas For People Looking To Cash In On The Marijuana Boom

The Wild West of weed is on fire with entrepreneurial opportunities. Potpreneurs across America are legally growing, curing and cooking the skunky stuff in record numbers. As those who cultivate and sell the plant grow, so do the offshoot businesses sprouting up around them.

Kristopher Fowlkes, founder and CEO of Pinnacle Consultation, a Colorado Springs, Colo.-based consulting firm that helps marijuana farmers streamline and increase yields, says ancillary cannabis startups are popping up across America mainly for two reasons. One, they’re generally less risky than growing and distributing pot from a legal standpoint. And, two, traditional businesses, such as banks, still don’t want to touch those who directly touch the controversial plant. After all, pot’s stigma, like its stink, is strong and hard to get rid of, though forward strides are being made every day.

“Small-business people are swooping in where the big guys won’t,” Fowlkes tells Entrepreneur. “They’re coming up with anything and everything at this point, even taking out grow-house garbage to get in on the trend. It’s wild the type of entrepreneurship that the cannabis industry has created, and we’re only just scratching the surface.”

With marijuana now legal in some form in 25 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, and legal at the recreational level in four states, opportunities to make greenbacks on the booming cash crop abound. Here are nine business ideas for people looking to cash in on the multi-billion-dollar green rush, but not looking to grow or dispense: